Obviously, the content is paramount, but it's also an extremely portable physical object, with sensory attributes like weight, smell, colour, design, beauty, and so on.

Though difficult, dating portable objects provides an important link in building a chronology of the art, and thus evolution of prehistoric man.

Morton's art came into being at a time when artists were bending over backward to avoid making portable, permanent objects.

It could have looked like a book, a camera, a walking stick, a tobacco pipe, a purse- almost any small unremarkable portable object.

"What's left of those cultures is essentially their portable objects: jewelry, sculpture, tablets," he said.

The key to spreading religion and influence from the main site to the satellite centers was through small portable objects that held ritual religious meaning.

This portable object looks like a small milk churn, but, in fact, is built from two skins of metal around a central flue.

By the ninth century, these medieval artisans were skilled at crafting portable objects but still had little knowledge of stonecutting or building.

I told Fred to tell Saul to keep an eye on the furniture and other portable objects.

Nearly all portable objects have been stripped from the wreck by souvenir-hunting divers.